


Unkind and Twisted Things

by rufeepeach



Series: Bounty Hunter [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, bounty!hunter Belle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 17:29:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpelstiltskin accidentally runs into his favourite little bounty hunter again, and is entranced by her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unkind and Twisted Things

He’s not keeping tabs on her.  
  
Really, he’s not.  
  
Belle is more than capable of taking care of herself. Hell, if she wasn’t, he likely as not would have killed her himself already.  
  
It’s a complete coincidence when Rumpelstiltskin finds himself in the same village that is being terrorised by a really rather unlucky minotaur. Someone called his name, sent a message on the wind, and the scent of desperation has always been enough to summon him near.  
  
Not the scent of cinnamon and woodsmoke, that clings to her hair.  
  
He had had no idea that Belle would be here, slaying monsters and collecting her payment from the town elders.  
  
Probably should have expected it, though.  
  
He lurks in the back of the meeting, glamoured and invisible, as the town thanks the bounty hunter for her services. They give her a wide berth, they are frightened of her, and with good reason: this woman just slew a minotaur and came out standing and unscathed. They grant her a heavy leather pouch of gold – probably more than the whole town makes at market in a year – as a reward.  
  
She smiles, bows more gracefully than he ever could, and he feels a little stab of something when she makes a familiar little flourish with her hand, a gesture he himself had perfected.  
  
There’s something unbearably provocative about her, dressed in a feminine interpretation of his own wardrobe, complete with the same dramatic gestures and the same mocking smile. Almost as if she knows he’s there, watching her, and is putting on a show just for him. She  swaggers  out of the room and brushes past him at the door, just lightly, her leather-wrapped hips swinging in rhythm with her long chestnut hair.  
  
And there it is, that scent of smoke and spice, the one he  hasn’t been craving since the moment she strode out of his castle.  
  
It takes all that he is not to follow her, find an alleyway or a tree in the forest to slam her against, and find out if her mouth tastes of cinnamon, too. He could peel those skintight leather trousers from her long, lean legs inch by inch, scrape his teeth against every tiny piece of bare skin he uncovers. He could make her moan and keen, grind against him and beg him for more, if only he could touch her.  
  
But he can’t. Because this is an accident, them being here at the same time, and so he must allow her to carry on her merry way without him.  
  
He watches her go, but his body and his head are apparently in disagreement over the idea of following her, and his feet - traitorous little appendages that they are - slip him softly after her. He lurks in the side streets, glamoured in the shadows, eyes trained on those hypnotic hips and high, confident shoulders.  
  
He follows her to the stables, even though he has no horse, but he was going to buy one for the trip back, save a little magic. It’s really rather fortunate that she’s headed that way too.  
  
He watches her with her steed, as she murmurs sweet, soothing, cooing comments to it, strokes the mane and noise, familiar as an old friend. She seems somehow softer, here, with only her animal for company and no elders or townspeople to impress. Even her scar, long and angry red on the side of her perfect face, seems dimmer and fainter in the torchlight.  
  
The horse is the same brown as her hair, and leans into her caress, eats a lump of sugar right from her palm. Rumpelstiltskin watches, and tries not to think about how willingly he would do the same, how he he could trace lips and tongue over her palms, remove all traces of sweetness and follow the veins up her arms. He would pause to bite and suckle, bruise the soft skin on the inside of her forearm with his mark and leave a reminder of him wherever she goes.  
  
But he should snap his fingers, and be back in his home.  
  
He could lie in his bed and remember her alone, indulge in memory one more time, let imagination take hold and bring himself off with her name on his lips. He could do as he has too many times since the night she came to kill him, and come out no worse for it.  
  
And yet he stays in the shadows, cloaked in magic, and simply watches.  
  
There is a gust of wind that ruffles her hair, and downwind Rumpelstiltskin sends his thanks to the Gods of the four breezes, because there is that scent again. He inhales, eyes close for just a second, the sight and scent of her so close too much to bear. He commits it to memory, along with every other facet he’s noticed of who she is, for further use.  
  
Her back is to him when her voice cuts through the stillness of the scene, “Rumpelstiltskin.”  
  
He freezes, like a child caught stealing, and doesn’t dare to breathe.  
  
“Show yourself.” she sighs, exasperated, and he feels like doing just that so as to remind her who is the stronger of the two of them.  
  
She got a few lucky shots in, the last time they met.  
  
He could have slit her throat, tied pretty bows in her blood vessels and stopped her heart with a flick of his wrist and a muttered incantation.  
  
Why he chose not to is still a mystery to him.  
  
But he stays still. Because she cannot know that he is there - only fairies can see through glamours, and she isn’t quite sparkly enough for that - and so this is just a guess, a bluff called to empty darkness.  
  
Does she do this every time she feels a little afraid?   
  
Is it possible that she wishes he’d come, that this challenge is more a hope than a threat?  
  
The idea sings through his blood and quickens his heart, that she could be as intrigued by him as he is enchanted by her. For that is what she surely is, an enchantress in hunter’s clothing, a tiger in a wolf’s skin. How else could she have so thoroughly enslaved his mind, with just a wicked little smirk and a taste of her skin?  
  
She weakens him, like poison, and to show himself at her command is to weaken still further.  
  
“I know you’re there.” A hint of doubt, of uncertainty, has crept into her voice, “Stop following me.”  
  
“Following you?” he drops his mask, and she spins to face him on her heel, hellfire and surprise warring in her eyes. He leans casually, calmly, smile wide and mocking. “You do yourself a compliment, dearie.”  
  
“Because you’re so desperately in need of a horse?” she scoffs, recovers fast, sarcastic bravado a first instinct, “A magician who needs a ride. Now that’s novel.”  
  
“All magic comes at a price,” he sing-songs, a he has a thousand times and will a thousand more, “Horses require no price but coin.”  
  
“Why do I not believe you?” her hands are on her hips, and it gives a rather splendid view of her chest, which he admires at length. In fact, he drags his gaze all over her, from the tips of her high leather boots to the curve of her hips, to the swell of her breasts. He lingers on the side of her neck where he left his mark in their last encounter, traces the sweeping tilt of her cherry lips, and meets her eyes with a smirk.  
  
She’s breathing a little hard, for someone who wishes him dead.  
  
“Because you’re an untrusting, uncharitable,  _ unkind _ little thing and you have, after all, met me before.” He dances closer to her, hands behind his back, going from hidden to dominant in a shift of his feet.  
  
“Then this  _ isn’t _ about a horse,” she smiles, triumphant and smug, “Knew it. Now get lost, Rumpelstiltskin, I’m not in the mood to fight again today.”  
  
He doesn’t know when he got so close that he could touch her with just a glancing motion of his arms, when he began to smell her breath as she tried to keep it steady, or see the green in her blue eyes.  
  
“Nor am I,” he murmurs, “Although it wouldn’t be much of a fight.”  
  
“Are you here to kill me?” she asks, chin raised to meet his eyes, and her voice holds no fear.  
  
She most likely has a transportation spell or two herself, hidden on that ubiquitous belt of hers, and he’d no sooner have his claws in the soft skin of her throat than she’d be halfway to Agrabah.  
  
He wouldn’t dream of killing her, anyway: death is too simple for a twisted little thing like her. She deserves the most agonising pleasure and  exquisite pain. She deserves to scream and not know if she’s in heaven or hell. Death is for people with beginnings and ends: she is forever front and centre.  
  
“No.” He shakes his head, and somehow his hands have come to rest on her forearms, her skin warm through the red silk of her shirt.  
  
“Then why are you here,  _ Rumpelstiltskin ?” _  
  
And that is the question, the golden shining question that he cannot answer, even to his own mind. Why is he here, in this backwater village, skulking in the stables? Why did he follow her when she means nothing to him but a handful of memories, and a roll on his castle floor?  
  
So instead, he decides to answer a different and entirely more pressing question: he tangles a hand in the curls at the back of her head, and holds her still as he claims her mouth with his. She makes a shocked little squeaking sound, freezes, and he slants his lips over hers, running his tongue along the seam of her mouth, demanding entrance.  
  
Something snaps in her, he can almost  _ feel _ it, and she moans, deep in her throat, her hands coming to his shoulders as if to push him back or pull him close, she doesn’t seem quite certain which.  
  
Her hands, like his feet earlier, seem to make the decision for her and they come to wrap around the strands of his hair, playing at the back of his neck, the feathery touches of her fingertips almost unbearable against his skin.  
  
Her mouth opens for him and he sweeps inside, gathering every hint of flavour, holding her as close to him as is possible. Perhaps then he can absorb into his skin whatever essence of her it is that sends him so entirely moonstruck, all racing pulse and fevered mind. He wants to eat her alive and make her a part of himself, keep her in a pretty little cage so he can touch her whenever he wants, without fear that she’ll turn and walk away from him without a backwards glance.  
  
She tastes like cherries and rainwater, sweet and fresh and cool, and he could have her on his tongue for a thousand years and never grow tired of that taste. The heat of her body seeps through his dragonhide coat, soaks into his very bones until he is burning for her, incandescent with her lips furious against his, and her sighs caught in the back of his throat.  
  
He whips his hands down and catches her waist, spins her so she is slammed against the stable wall, mouth slipping from her swollen lips and down her neck to the same place he’d been before. His mouth is a frenzy of worrying and biting and sucking so hard as to indelibly bruise, to claim and mark his little enchantress as his and his alone.  
  
She is whimpering, keening, her legs wrapped around his middle, hips bucking hard against him, and he needs to be inside her so badly it hurts. He grinds into her, hard and hot and ready, friction sending him cross-eyed as he mimics what he means to do to her through the leather between them.   
  
“You,” she pants, cries, sobs against him, “You were following me!”  
  
“Always,” he breathes, finally giving up on the ties of her shirt and just ripping the damn thing open, modesty be damned, “Always, you’re everywhere.” He scratches his claws over her scarred skin, over the little lines that tell of a life lived in perpetual wartime, the life of a huntress. She is staring at him, eyes wide, mouth hanging open as he flicks against her nipple with one claw and she gasps.  
  
He pinches, hard, puckering the little bud immediately, and she whimpers, screams a mixture of pleasure and pain, writhing against him, simultaneously seeking freedom and captivity, to be touched and to be able to run away.  
  
He just smirks, hitches her up so he can replace claws with teeth, so he can take her other breast in his mouth and suck hard, and nibble on her sensitive spots. Her fingers tangle in his hair, fingernails digging into his scalp, holding him still to feast upon her flesh as she moans, long and loud.  
  
His hands are hard at work on her flies, and he wrenches her trousers down hard, finally using a bit of magic to get them off completely. All magic comes with a price, but no price could be too high to pay for the pleasure of her plastered against him, bared to his sight in just her torn silk shirt and waistcoat, staring at him with a mixture of horror and deep, dark desire.  
  
She’s such a broken little raven, her wings clipped and feathers tattered. She grunts and moans like a whore, like she is pretending or paid to do so, but she is real, warm and hard and soft and genuine. She is as depraved as he, as bestial and corrupted, with a beautifully dark and mangled soul.   
  
She has bewitched him, body and soul, and he sets her down, falls to her feet and worships her as his goddess, as his sick and twisted deity.  
  
He wastes no time on ceremony; he cleaves his tongue into her, flicks his fingers against her clit and sucks in every drop of moisture, every sign that she wants the monster as much as he desires its hunter. She screams, arches down into his mouth, begs for more with every tremble of her hips as he swipes over her sensitive places, again and again, with teeth and flat tongue and fingers. Her fingers bury in his hair, hold him there, his mouth pressed hard against her dripping centre and he is entirely lost.  
  
There is no design, no plan, no steady rhythm or intent, just the sound of her whimpering cries in his ears and the pounding of her blood in his veins, and the taste of her, spicy and musky, on his tongue.  
  
He plunges two fingers deep inside her, twists, and she clenches impossibly hard around his knuckles as she comes, screeching like a phoenix, trembling all over and slumped to the floor beside him, her knees too weak to hold her up.  
  
She kneels before him, dazed and limp, breathing hard and he’s too far gone to stop now. He throws her to the stable floor, mounts her quickly, pulls down his trousers as far as he can and takes himself in hand. He waits for her eyes to open, so she can see what she’s done to him, so she can understand the spell she’s cast.  
  
Then he lines them up, and plunges into her in one long, deep stroke, drawing another cry from her lips as he sneers down at her.  
  
He cannot be tender, sweet or gentle, and he wouldn’t want to be. He is a beast, a monster, and monsters take what they need whether or not it is freely given. But she’s screaming like she’s dying, and wrapping her legs around his hips and bucking up to meet every punishing stroke, and he doesn’t think she objects to this at  all . He pounds her into the floor, a desperate and ragged animal claiming his mate, and she responds in kind, taking him as deep as she can and screeching, arching into him as she feasts on her breasts.  
  
One flick of his claw against her clit and she’s coming again, wrenching around him, her sweet cries echoing through the rafters as he growls, low and deep, following her over the edge with a strangled shout.  
  
She is filled with him, every inch and drop of him, and he marks her again, under her jaw, biting down hard on her throat, just restrained enough to not draw blood.  
  
She is  his, his perfect little broken creature, and all the world must know that.  
  
He collapses against her, boneless, and this time he has the nerve to wrap his arms around her, to haul her against him and hold her for a moment.  
  
And for one brief, warm and shining moment, she is holding him too. Her hands cover his over her stomach, and she sighs, rests her head on his shoulder and folds her legs around his.  
  
Almost as if they’re lovers, sweet and gentle and kind to each other. Almost as if what just transpired could be described as lovemaking and not hard, desperate coupling against a stable floor. As if she doesn’t despise him his monstrous face, and he doesn’t hate her for making him so low, so weak and uncontrolled.  
  
He dresses her with one slow move of his hand, allows the trousers to wrap themselves lovingly around her legs and the boots to twine carefully at her ankles. He watches the show and wonders what it means that he finds dressing her almost as sensual, as erotic, as the fantasy of slowly peeling those very same garments off of her.  
  
She scrambles to her feet, steps back a few paces, and he rises with a mite more elegance, somehow making a point.  
  
She stares at him, and they’re all dressed again, and neither of them know what to say. She stares at him with the self-loathing disgust, the horror he knew would come, and it is almost as delicious as the taste of her juices still fresh on his tongue. He is a monster, and she knows better than anyone what that entails. And if he is a gnarled, twisted, evil creature, then what does that make her? How terrible, how black and irredeemable must her own soul be, if she can draw such pleasure from such a beast?  
  
“You were following me.” She says, and the light, almost flirtatious, challenging tone is back where it ought to be. A woman such as she must be well-trained in swallowing down disgust, the sickness that comes from knowing her own thoughts, remembering her own actions.   
  
“I am a man, dearie,” he replies, cool and condescending smirk back in place, “And your arse looks lovely in those skintight leathers of yours.”  
  
“Uh huh.” she nods, and he loves her smile, her mocking little grin, “Now, if you would kindly fuck off, that would be lovely.” She turns, opens the stable and gets her horse out, and as she bends to tighten some reign strap or other, he walks past her and smacks her behind, just to prove the point.  
  
Her cry of indignation follows him all the way to the Dark Castle, as he snaps out of the stable and into his dining room.


End file.
